Snapcash – the way to make P2P payments

Snapchat just launched their Snapcash service in the US which you to send money to friends by sending them a message (details here in Techcrunch). Many entrepreneurs have gone after the P2P payments market, but no-one has so far succeeded. I think Snapcash might be different for the following reasons:

It piggy-backs on a large existing network

It is simple to use – just start a message with a dollar sign

It’s free

The service is based on Square and requires the sender and receiver to enter their debit card info, which makes it a small step from here to being able to pay retailers as well as consumers. As well as increasing engagement with their users the benefit it Snapchat is that it will have real names for participating users, useful for ad targeting.

I wonder if Facebook will do something similar to Snapcash with Whatsapp.

Dan Field

And gives Snapchat an identify to their users… That’s the smart bit I like. They can hook all of this up into their ad targeting.